Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz said on Thursday that China is the "real existential" threat the United States faces right now.
"We hear a lot from the Democratic presidential candidates about the existential threat of climate change, and this is the real existential threat to America, it's the Communist Chinese," Gertz said on the Sean Hannity Show, while discussing his new book, Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China's Drive for Global Supremacy.
Gertz said China is waging a multifronted war on the United States, attacking it in areas of trade as well as in areas of national security, with ramped-up military efforts in "space weaponry, cyber-attacks, and intelligence operations."
Gertz praised President Donald Trump for taking on China and for making "American national security intricately linked to economic security" in his strategy against it.
"This is the first time that's been done," Gertz said. "So he's made that the main issue, and as a result of that, of course, the biggest threat to our economy right now is China. And through these tariffs, he's basically laid out that path, and the Chinese are responding."
Gertz cited Chinese attacks on American agriculture and trade as proof the nation is on the defensive against America. He added that the United States almost signed a trade deal with China earlier this year, but China backed out because their agreement would require "a full admission that they had been conducting cyber-attacks, intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, and all of these things that Trump is trying to correct."
Trump's aggressive stance on China is markedly different from former President Barack Obama's deference toward the nation, Gertz said. The point of his new book, he added, was to raise awareness among the national security community that China is a force that must be dealt with soon.
"I've basically been really beating the drum to highlight this threat from China, which I think is going to take all of America's resources to confront and really mitigate this threat," he said.